The present invention is directed to an improved line activity monitor for monitoring and recording information indicative of the usage of one or more telephone lines.
A variety of telephone line activity monitors are known to the prior art. One example is described in our previous U.S. Pat. No. 4,270,024. The monitor disclosed in this patent operates as described to record information which summarizes important aspects of the usage patterns of a set of telephone lines. For example, the disclosed monitor stores information related to the total number of calls on a line, the total number of unanswered calls, the total number of outgoing calls, the total number of calls abandoned by a caller while on hold, and the total number of calls serviced for predetermined time intervals, and so forth. This monitor has been found useful in a wide variety of business applications.
However, the monitor described in the above-identified patent is not without disadvantages. Since it operates to record summary information regarding multiple calls, it can only provide the particular classes of information for which it has been programmed. For example, the disclosed embodiment in the above-identified application does not operate to provide information as to the number of calls which were placed on hold during two separate time periods each of which was greater than one minute. Thus, this monitor is a preprogrammed monitor which operates well for many applications, but which is not sufficiently flexible to provide desired information in all situations.
Furthermore, the disclosed monitor tabulates information on all incoming calls, regardless of the nature of the call. Thus, the disclosed monitor cannot be used to analyze usage patterns characteristic of a particular type of call.
Typically, telephone centers handle a variety of types of calls. For example, a retail order desk may handle not only merchandise orders but also merchandise inquiries, credit inquiries, the return of merchandise, and the like. In many cases it is important in analyzing telephone center usage patterns to classify incoming calls according to the nature of the call. For example, it may be important to know what percentage of incoming calls are merchandise orders, and what usage patters are characteristic of that type of call. In the past this has been done by having operators manually record peg counts on a spread sheet. This approach introduces substantial inaccuracies because operators often fail to make the peg count at the time the call was handled, but rather attempt to do so later, several at a time, as they attempt to recall situations. Furthermore, this manual approach of the prior art does not enable traffic analysis to relate call characteristics to a particular type of call. For example, this prior art manual approach would not allow a determination that credit inquiry calls are typically very short in conversation times but inordinately long in on hold times.
Thus, a need exists for an improved telephone line activity monitor with increased flexibility, both with regard to the manner in which usage parameters are recorded, and the types of usage parameters which are recorded.